The OFFICIAL Unofficial Achewood Message Board
Trivial Pursuits => History => Topic started by: Limmo on September 29, 2005, 04:27:21 pm
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Sometimes I just...I don't know what to say. (http://mediamatters.org/items/200509280006)
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Jeepers, what an ill-advised thing to say.
I just finished reading the book they're talking about, Freakonomics. It was pretty good. The point the book made re: legalized abortion and crime rate drop was this -- pregnancies are more likely to be aborted by women who do not want babies or are unable or unprepared to raise children. Is it possible that children actually born into this situation are more likely to grow up and commit crimes?
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Jeepers, what an ill-advised thing to say.
I just finished reading the book they're talking about, Freakonomics. It was pretty good. The point the book made re: legalized abortion and crime rate drop was this -- pregnancies are more likely to be aborted by women who do not want babies or are unable or unprepared to raise children. Is it possible that children actually born into this situation are more likely to grow up and commit crimes?
Yeah, that's what really got me about this particular comment in the book. Insofar as it made any statement on the abortion question at all, the statement it made was "women appear to competently assess their ability and desire to raise a child and generally make appropriate choices." That really isn't a pro- or anti-abortion stance, just a stance in favor of allowing women to make a choice, as opposed to anything involving mandatory abortions. (Mandatory-abortion arguments might be my favorite straw man. Is anyone actually in favor of these?)
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Well, statistically a large number of *convicted* crimes are committed by black men, and black males make up the majority of our prison population.
Does this mean black men are more prone to crime, or does our justice system discriminate and sentence more black men than an equal amount of guilty white men?
I don't know. But I don't think the crime problem has as much to do with race as economic status. It's not that rich people don't commit crimes - but the crimes they tend to commit are different types of crimes.
Anyway, I think you eliminate the lower class and you'll see crime drop to almost nothing.
And the Republicans have been trying to eliminate the lower class for years. Ba doom boom.
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Whether or not his statement was accurate it was an astoundingly impolitic thing to say.
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I'm of two opinions on it. The first, more immediate thought is the expected "How dare he? What a horribly insensitive thing to say, it's obvious how he really feels about blacks," etc.
The second, though, is that maybe we need more incendiary talk like this in politics to make people wake up and realize what the people we put in power really think about stuff. This isn't some dude with a blog. He was part of Reagan's Cabinet. He was in the Presidential Order of Succession (albeit as Sec. of Education, he ranked just above Castro and just below Skippy The Wonder Goldifsh).
Of course, he might be right. Maybe killing all the black people WOULD greatly reduce the crime rate. Then again, killing all the white people would redistribute the world's wealth on a grand scale and go a long way to eliminating the crime that blacks statistically are convicted of (a subtle point Jough made).
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I thought it was odd for Bennett to say but without hearing the whole show it's tough. The fact that his show is on Salem and the link is to what looks to be a more left-leaning web publication indicates to me that more information would be helpful.
As for mandatory abortions being a straw man - well, until recently there were eugenics boards functioning in some areas, and that is not so different. It's not as much a straw man as you might think, certainly not all that long ago. Here's a scary link: Future Generations (http://www.eugenics.net/index.shtml)
The socio-economic argument made by the caller is flawed but interesting. Since a great many black men don't live long enough to collect social security anyway, it would be free money IF all those babies went into the work force. Hmmm. They work, someone else eventually gets paid. I think European-Americans tried that before.
Whether you are pro-choice or pro-life, you have to admit that the likely socio-economic cost of outlawing abortion and thereby increasing the pressure on urban and rural women to make bad choices would be overwhelming and would disproportionately affect the minority poor. You would, I think, have to make significant changes and increases in social programming and expenditures (not to mention education, housing, and law enforcement) to manage that outcome. It would be very expensive; probably more expensive (in economic terms) than the abortions. Many people believe that the cost of abortions runs far beyond just the economic, though.
Good Catch, Limmo, that is really interesting.
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I think that in China some women have been forced to abort their pregnancies because of population laws. I don't know whether it happens now. If you were asking whether people in this country actually support mandatory abortion, I think that some people on the fringes do, in order to slow down population growth, but obviously no one who sides on the pro-choice side of the debate would argue for anything remotely close to mandatory abortion.
Also, I read an article about a study a year ago or so that suggested the link between economics and crime isn't as strong as a lot of people think. Of course, I don't have a source, but apparently there isn't a complete consensus with the idea that poverty equals crime, and therefore a reduction in poverty (or in poor people) equals a reduction in crime.
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Yeah, miles has it right. Mandatory abortion is a straw man when arguing the pro-life case, because virtually nobody on the pro-choice side would ever condone forced abortion under any circumstance. (There are probably people who would, but they're at the fringes.)
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I think I can agree with Miles in that there isn't a one-to-one causal relationship between poverty and crime.
There were some studies based on interviews and recollections of the Watts riots that were done that seemed to indicate that poverty wasn't the issue nearly so much as the disparity between the rich and poor. The reasoning seems to follow that if everyone had the same stuff, no one would get the idea that they need or want something they don't have. If I recall what I read forever ago in urban studies, a major issue was televisions - poorer people (in 1965) didn't have them and there was a perception that a television set was a status symbol. A main target of the looting during Watts was television sets.
Another interesting study was done in New Orleans and I think other places in the 1990's - it was called 'Broken Windows'. As I recall it, several different neighborhoods with similar demographics - income, age, racial distribution - are selected. Then very careful study of the public areas of each neighborhood are studided. The condition of roads, parks, play structures, buildings, the number of empty lots, amount of trash, etc...everything except what the people were doing.
So they quantify all these environmental factors and create a method of quantifying the level of disorder.
Then they layered that data with public health and crime data. Interestingly enough, the neighborhoods with higher disorder also had higher levels of STDs, drug use, etc.
Neighborhoods with similar demographics but well maintained buildings and parks showed measurably lower levels of general bad outcomes that can be considered results of people's behavior.
So my point is that being poor is not and has never been automatically criminal. When people are in a situation where they feel that their basic needs and expectations aren't met (providing working play equipment for kids, safe schools, minimally maintained buildings) some people feel that they are justified in ignoring the law, since it's clear (to them) that whoever is responsible for social order (the government, etc.) is ignoring them. Probably it's more complex than that, but you know.
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Mmmmmmmm. Fox news...
As far as I will go is to say Fox News is probably the thing in the media that makes me regularly most angry and ill feeling.
Apart from that, I doubt I can add anything to this argument feeling seperately ill and incoherent as I already do.
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Slink -
Do you get the identical Fox News that we get here? Just curious - I know there are CNNs made and broadcast overseas that are different from the US version.
The current state of News Media as a whole makes me pretty angry. The whole "tragedy TV" culture of breathless (and inaccurate) reporting of cannibalsim and mayhem in NO is a classic example. Also the really weird fixation on white, blond, female college students who go missing - the whole Aruba thing was just grotesque.
I take almost everything I see on TV news as OP-ED pieces. I have no faith in objectivity; I think it's gone. Fake documents, inability to check sources, fixation on things that just aren't national news - too much emphasis on entertainment. It cuts across Network, Cable, and Radio Talk show outlets. Maybe less so in slick magazines but they have clear leanings as well. Even the NY Times and LA Times have well publicized problems with journalistic integrity these days.
Bottom line: it's hard to sort the wheat from the chaff anymore.
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<<Transcript of call to Bill Bennett>>
Caller: I noticed the national media, you know, they talk a lot about the loss of revenue, or the inability of the government to fund Social Security, and I was curious, and I've read articles in recent months here, that the abortions that have happened since Roe v. Wade, the lost revenue from the people who have been aborted in the last 30-something years, could fund Social Security as we know it today. And the media just doesn't--never touches this at all.
Bennett: Assuming they're all productive citizens?
Caller: Assuming that they are. Even if only a portion of them were, it would be an enormous amount of revenue.
Bennett: Maybe, maybe, but we don't know what the costs would be, too. I think as--abortion disproportionately occurs among single women, no?
Caller: I don't know the exact statistics, but quite a bit are, yeah.
Bennett: All right, well, I mean, I just don't know. I would not argue for the pro-life position based on this, because you don't know. I mean, it cuts both [ways]. You know, one of the arguments in this book Freakonomics that they make is that the declining crime rate, you know, they deal with this hypothesis, that one of the reasons crime is down is that abortion is up. Well--
Caller: Well, I don't think that statistic is accurate.
Bennett: Well, I don't think it is either, I don't think it is either, because first of all, there is just too much that you don't know. But I do know that it's true that if you wanted to reduce crime, you could--if that were your sole purpose--you could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down. That would be an impossible, ridiculous, and morally reprehensible thing to do, but your crime rate would go down. So these far-out, these far-reaching, extensive extrapolations are, I think, tricky.
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I don't think Bennet set out to articulate a racist position or a position supporting selective abortion. His main intent seems to be to caution the caller about extrapolating broad social effects from hypothetical policy changes.
He could have made the same exact argument by saying you could abort every white baby, or every asian baby, or every latino baby, or just some arbitrary percentage of all babies though - I think that <maybe> it's too convenient and to some degree ingrained in us to throw in the word 'black' when discussing poverty or crime or drug use. That's a problem - but it's a problem that cuts across our culture without respect to politics.
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I think I need more context before I can let Bill Bennet off the hook here. The caller was talking about abortion in general and it was Bennet that suddenly started talking about "aborting every black baby."
And as for the "impossible, ridiculous, and morally reprehensible thing to do" i'm not sure he was talking about the obvious and blatant racism in that statement? Maybe he was saying that it's abortion he finds "morally reprehensible" even for black people.
~Paul
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Now, that may be the case, but we could do with some objectionality I feel.
Is that the same as objectivity? I think we could use that as well as some kind of real threshold as to what should be national news - I am tired of seeing it all over the cable news channels every time a white blond college student disappears or a white upper middle class pregnant wife either vanishes or is murdered. I just don't understand why that is more newsworthy than everything else that happened in every town in the US that day.
So for the most part, I agree with you.
Now, I wonder, what do you think about David Frost going to work for Al Jazeera?
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I think I need more context before I can let Bill Bennet off the hook here. The caller was talking about abortion in general and it was Bennet that suddenly started talking about "aborting every black baby."
And as for the "impossible, ridiculous, and morally reprehensible thing to do" i'm not sure he was talking about the obvious and blatant racism in that statement? Maybe he was saying that it's abortion he finds "morally reprehensible" even for black people.
~Paul
That's the whole call, there really isn't more context. You could get background on Bennett, but that would tell you that he's not a known racist.
The real issue to me is mediamatters.org conveniently leaving off the end of the statement to manipulate opinions. People are easily led.
There's no point is searching around to figure out how to pin the racist tag on Bill Bennett. Even if he is one, which I doubt, there is nothing to point to that in his public life or writings, because the media would have trotted it out by now.
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To say that a randomly-picked young black person in the US is more likely to be a criminal than a randomly-picked young white person is not racist.
To say that you shouldn't trust black people because they're inherently prone to crime is racist.
The fact of the matter is, a poor person is more likely to turn to street crime than someone with comfortable income. A person in an urban environment is more likely to become a criminal than someone living in a suburban or rural environment. Young males are the most likely to be criminals. I don't think I'll get any argument on that.
Now, can it be agreed that urban poor is the best combination for producing criminals? I think yes.
Can it be agreed that blacks make up a larger proportion of urban poor in the US than in the population as a whole? If you don't believe that, look at the census.
So a poor young urban male is the most likely segment to be a criminal. And someone of that description is more likely to be black than a rich landowner is.
So there's a correlation. The problem is people mistake correlation for causation. Why? People are stupid.
As for the statement? Well, if we're going to assume aborting fetuses that would later grow into criminals would reduce crime, and since black people constitute at least part of the population of criminals (there need only be one black criminal aborted for this to be logically sound) then yes, it is true that the crime rate would go down.
More effective, of course, would be to send death squads into blighted parts of cities to identify and terminate criminals.
But no one wants to hear that, because we're raised to think the effective thing and the right thing are necessarily connected. I mean, The Party would be extremely efficient. It just sort of sucks to live in an Orwellian state.
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A person in an urban environment is more likely to become a criminal than someone living in a suburban or rural environment.
sorry, can i throw my red flag and call for a coach's review?
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Sure. I've personally never avoided a small town or middle-class suburb because I thought I might get mugged, but perhaps that's just my own prejudice.
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Sure. I've personally never avoided a small town or middle-class suburb because I thought I might get mugged, but perhaps that's just my own prejudice.
i'm sorry, i didn't realize that crime==mugging.
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Hmmm.
I'm not going to go into the whole "Bill Bennett" thing, because the only person who knows what he meant is Bill Bennett. What is OBVIOUS is that he said something that one could argue is racist. I think it's pretty obvious that Bennet said something that you just do not say. You do not talk about forced minority abortion, even if you're warning someone not to extrapolate too much, because Jesus Christ, man- forced minority abortion. I'm betting that the second Bennett finished that sentence, he realized what he had just said, on live national televisions. I kind of wish I could have heard the thoughts inside of his head.
KLAXONS BLARING
Bennett's Consciousness: DIVE! DIVE! DIVE! SOMEHOW JUSTIFY WHAT YOU JUST SAID!
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I'm of the belief that, if poverty doesn't directly cause crime, it gives it a warm meal and a hot bath, and, as A'Dawg said, the more important thing is the disparity between the rich and poor. Our economic class system is more stratified than it has been since the Gilded Age, and the more you have a society that worships money and fetishizes luxury objects, quite openly, in front of the very poor, the more crime you are going to have. To give an example that made me extremely angry-
I live in Harlem. Last year, I lived for a time in a much worse apartment in Harlem. We were robbed the first day we moved in- the previous tenants had taken the window gate, the landlord had failed to mention that a window gate was needed, and someone jimmied the fire escape window open. We lived in a very, very cheap apartment. Yet almost every parking spot on our block had an SUV in it.
Last year, Courvoisier ran an ad campaign, in which one saw a bottle of the liquor and a statement. On the subway, it said, "How nice of you to stand."
The ads which dominated the Harlem area read "No, I Don't Have Any Spare Change."
The fact that some fuck*ng white guy in a suit somewhere in Midtown sat down and said, wow, there are a lot of totally impoverished black people in Harlem- we should plaster the area with ads for an expensive and fetishized liquor, just fuck*ng kills me. The fact that 50 Cent, an admitted ex-crack dealer, is having a movie made about his life, fuck*ng kills me. The fact that there are tons of rap artists who, in every video, repeat the importance of luxury items and liquid assets, artists who have, for the most part, completely failed to give back to the communities from whence they came, makes me want to shit and die.
I'm sorry. Living in Harlem sort of makes this stuff very obvious. If a culture values luxury items and wealth above all other things, and if that culture is continually blared at an impoverished and underpriveledged group constantly, the message- that education is not important, that the only way you will succeed is through drug sales, basketball or the entertainment industry, that the rich are, in some intrinsic way, Better Than You- you're going to reap a whole shitstorm of crime.
Our entire culture is like this. Watch VH1 or MTV for a few hours, watch Cribs and that fuck*ng Fabulous Life of... show. The reason this is affecting young urban blacks the most is the disparity that they see is the greatest. Shit, this is a long post. I hope nobody reads this and thinks that I'm racist- I'm sure you can find examples of impoverished white communities where this is happening; hell, there are all of those rural meth labs. And I blame most of this culture on the white entertainment moguls, I blame the impoverishment on Reagan's War on Drugs and the resulting ghettoization.
I don't know how to end this post. I'm sorry.
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I don't know how to end this post. I'm sorry.
You're right about the disparity driving crime to a certain extent and certainly correct in your assessment of both targeted advertising and the cult of luxury that exists particularly in impoverished areas.
The question I still wonder about is why the vast percentage of crime that occurs in these areas is black-on-black crime? You would think many of these factors would drive class warfare but that seems not to be the case.
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The question I still wonder about is why the vast percentage of crime that occurs in these areas is black-on-black crime? You would think many of these factors would drive class warfare but that seems not to be the case.
I suspect it's a matter of opportunity. Assuming that you were a poor person driven to petty crime, who are you going to be able to victimize: rich people, who live in neighborhoods you can't reach easily, can afford extensive home security, and who will definitely attract police attention? Or your fellow poor, who are close by, usually lacking in security, and definitely lacking in police attention? There aren't really any other realistic options.
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...rich people, who live in neighborhoods you can't reach easily, can afford extensive home security, and who will definitely attract police attention?
There was a thing in a Micheal Moore book, I think it's Downsize This, where he talks about the L.A. riots, and how the rioters could have easily moved 4 miles to an extremely affluent, gated community. I concur with V; when I was living in the worse apartment, I would never see a police car. I think they figured that there was nothing going on in those blocks that they could stop- it was a Sacrifice Zone. Now I live 15 blocks down, and not a day goes by that an ambulance or a police car is not parked on my block. It seems to me that the cops have figured out where the communities are too insular and possibly dangerous for them to do anything, and simply patrol around them. I doubt I would do anything different.
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Bozack: I love you, Man.
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Anyway-
I'm of the belief that, if poverty doesn't directly cause crime, it gives it a warm meal and a hot bath, and, as A'Dawg said, the more important thing is the disparity between the rich and poor. Our economic class system is more stratified than it has been since the Gilded Age, and the more you have a society that worships money and fetishizes luxury objects, quite openly, in front of the very poor, the more crime you are going to have.
There are countries with much less disparity between the rich and the poor, like the UK and Denmark, that have significantly higher property crime rates than the US. I think Canada's rates are slightly higher, and Australia's are much higher (though I don't know much about the economy and distribution of wealth there).
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There are countries with much less disparity between the rich and the poor, like the UK and Denmark, that have significantly higher property crime rates than the US. I think Canada's rates are slightly higher, and Australia's are much higher (though I don't know much about the economy and distribution of wealth there).
Well, there goes my theory. Another casualty of Facts and Science.
So what the fuck is going on? I mean, I think I can attribute most of the crime in the UK, Australia and Canada to "hooliganism," but Denmark? I thought that country was just one big Eero Saarinen building.
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I imagine economic inequality has something to do with crime, I just don't think that it's the only or main cause like some liberal sociologists have argued. Also, US culture has at least a small influence in each of those countries. Maybe your idea-- that "the more you have a society that worships money and fetishizes luxury objects, quite openly, in front of the very poor, the more crime you are going to have"--does not apply, or at least only apply, to the very poor. Maybe rises in property crime rates aren't as closely linked to desperation as they are to something like envy.
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Well, the thing is, burglars aren't exactly spartan in their life view. I'd shorten it to "A society that holds material wealth in high regard will have more property crime."
Think about all those white-collar embezzlers. They aren't desperate; just avaricious.
When you're poor enough to be unhappy, you're more likely to consider crime to get the things you want because you have less to lose.
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Well, there goes my theory. Another casualty of Facts and Science.
So what the fuck is going on? I mean, I think I can attribute most of the crime in the UK, Australia and Canada to "hooliganism," but Denmark? I thought that country was just one big Eero Saarinen building.
His sole purpose for being was to become a crossword puzzle answer. It just proves the universe has a reason for everything.
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the equation ya'll are trying to define has more than one variable.
and it seems several of the constants that are being assumed have different values for different people.
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I can attribute most of the crime in the UK, Australia and Canada to "hooliganism," but Denmark? I thought that country was just one big Eero Saarinen building.
Wha? I know you're just being silly, but seriously man...
Although it's not really touched upon in the States, Canada has serious, serious racial issues between Aboriginal and Non-Aboriginal people. Aboriginal crime and dependancy on welfare is a wide speard and undenyable problem. In my own city, where the racial balance is just slightly more Non-Aboriginal people to Aboriginals, there is an obvious ghetto - the North End - filled almost entirely with Aboriginal people and immigrants. When a murder happens in Winnipeg - or any other news making crime - it is almost always in the North End, and usually both the suspect and the vicitm are Aboriginal. Because I am Metis (aka half-Aboriginal & half-white - aka the Canadian equivelent of Mulatto) I am super-aware of the racial divide in my country. Even when I look at just the demographic of my Aboriginal friends vs my white friends it is the Aboriginal friends that have the mental health issues, the drug problems, the lack of proper education, a history of abuse, the criminal records, etc. As far as the root cause, it's fairly clearly boiled down the the Canadian Government's attempt to totally anihilate my Grandparents' generation of Aboriginal people. When it comes the the solution? Fucked if I know! Since I've been working a lot with Aboriginal Youth lately, I do know some of what works though. When it comes to my grandparent's generation, due to what was inflicted upon them - specifically the residential school system (which was a government run system of required attendance boarding schools for all Aboriginal children age 5 - 18 from the late 1940's through to 1960's, executed as an all out attempt to "anihilate Indian-ness" as noted in one of the policies of the time, and which was a system rampant with physical and sexual abuse on a grand scale with thousands of documented cases) by in large, my Grandparent's generation either abandoned their children (my parent's generation) or abused the hell out of them. So the kids of my generation were raised by extremely fucked up parents to be fucked up individuals. And now my generation is having it's own children, and of the Aboriginal peers I know - and I definitly include myself in this pool - are so messed up that we are not psycologically fit to have children.
I do recognize that it is my responsibility to heal and my responsiblity to move out of the cycles previous generations have followed, but for most of the youth I have worked with through the program I helped run, this was a shocking and new concept. Self-empowerment is not something even on the radar for our parents geneartion of self hating or deeply emotionally scarred people. Central to this, I think the welfare state, at least in my country, is not helping anyone - the paternalistic attitude perpetuated by the government and accepted by the people who use it is, the core problem - it's the machine that perpetuates the cycle of abuse. As a non-white person, I can not deny that there is both a failure of many Aboriginal people to take personal responsibility for their lives, and a failure of government bodies to find other, viable solutions that do not perpetuate dependancy. I have a sneaking suspicion that this is at the core of the problem in the U.S. too. There needs to be a taking of responsibility on both sides of the equation, and until that happens, until it stops being about laying blame, there is no chance of any real change.
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I think the welfare state, at least in my country, is not helping anyone - the paternalistic attitude perpetuated by the government and accepted by the people who use it is, the core problem - it's the machine that perpetuates the cycle of abuse. As a non-white person, I can not deny that there is both a failure of many Aboriginal people to take personal responsibility for their lives, and a failure of government bodies to find other, viable solutions that do not perpetuate dependancy. I have a sneaking suspicion that this is at the core of the problem in the U.S. too. There needs to be a taking of responsibility on both sides of the equation, and until that happens, until it stops being about laying blame, there is no chance of any real change.
I agree in total, and I live in a poor black neighborhood in Atlanta, GA, US. The hard part of solving the problem comes not in providing the services which eliminate dependency, but in encouraging their use. Americorps was a good idea partially serving that purpose, and it rang completely hollow. Not its fault: if you compare the bill that was passed to create it with its form at its beginning, you too would be dismayed at our solution-preventing system. To contrast, punitive agencies (frex, in GA we have DFACS, the Dept. of Family and Child Svcs.) can only go so far to intervene, and even if they do there's no guarantee of recidivism, and even less a guarantee that the same paternalist views might cease.
This is the realm in which socialism and capitalism collide. Neither has a solution, and any combination of approaches seems just as fruitless. Compared to peak oil, outsourcing, and gay rights, the issue of improving the lot of the less fortunate is the most urgent with the widest effects in the country. It's a shame that our representative republic is engineered against this very issue's resolution.
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Wouldn't it be nice if we were all judged by the contents of our own individual soul?
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Smells: You're a Metis? But you write so well!
August: I think we are here. For instance, no one knows I'm a half-Mexican half-Inuit woman (except Wombat, whom I've met IRL). In print race, appearence, height, disability, etc. are meaningless. Everyone is equally an asshole on this forum.
Choop: I know what you mean. Some of my best friends are either gay or black!*
* It always cracks me up when I hear white people brag about having friends of some minority or another. I tell people I have some white friends but they never seem to get that I am mocking them - mocking them right in the face.
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Alright, we'll give some land to the niggers and the chinks, but we DON'T WANT THE IRISH!
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Hey!
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/disclaimer = written by a well of white boy sitting in a cushie university in the state capital.
I was just about to pop in the Australian version of all this but what Side_show described is basically it, with the variation that because our cities tend to be smaller than you folks' instead of ghettos we tend to have small rural towns where people are just poor as shit and basically sniff paint and get pregnant because there is nothing else to do. This seems to go no matter what colour your skin is. Again I should mention I could be totally wrong here, this is just what I've seen from a few good docos and friends who have lived out in these areas.
So I guess as far as that goes we don't have as many people who are desperately poor in the inner cities as I get the impression some american cities do. The one exception to this I can think of off the top of my head is Sydney, our biggest city, which has some ghettoesque areas (redfern springs to mind, but I've never lived there so I can't say for sure).
As for the whole race related to crime thing I don't notice a particularly higher number of aboriginals involved in violent crime on the news etc. this is probably at least partly because a good proportion of the Aboriginal community lives in the aforementioned towns and communities instead of the cities, and like I said above it is generally accepted that substance abuse and violent crime is generally higher (and more importantly unreported) in these areas to the point that more than one community has self imposed no alcohol rules (though I'm sure this is not unique).
So if I think criminal (in the property theft sense let's leave the white collar crime out of it for a moment) I'm more likely to think poor but not Aboriginal. I am however likely to assume poor (or at least poorer than me) when I think Aboriginal. Not saying I'm right mind, just giving you what my brain coughs up.
Well that was a lot of talking with no useful conclusions.
Except that I should trademark 'Ghettoesque'.
Oh and to any grammar Nazi's (i.e. all of you) I'm pretty sure Aboriginal isn't meant to be a noun but over here it's turned into one since Aborigine has kind of taken on negative connotations as far as I can tell (basically because of a century and a bit of casual racism).
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I would submit that people living in the "ghettoes" of the US are not desperately poor. Certainly, there are indigent people who eat out of dumpsters, but most urban poor have somewhere to live, enough to eat, running water, and adequate sanitation. What they don't have is luxury items, which the prevailing culture tells them are not only important, but necessary.
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Desperately poor was probably the wrong phrase to use, but like I say I have no idea what your country is like.
Also I was getting kicked out of the library so I didn't get a chance to add that the main reason we have an increase in property crime here in australia is that we are all damn dirty convicts. It's in the Blood damnit!
Seriously, our successful businessmen are really good at getting sent to jail, the only exception I can think of is Rupert Murdock and what does that tell you?
Apologies for my crappy train of consciousness writing tonight, my head before was full of Auranofin digestion and now it's 1am and not full of anything much.
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Seriously, our successful businessmen are really good at getting sent to jail, the only exception I can think of is Rupert Murdock and what does that tell you?
Oh, our businessmen are no better. Honestly, I have infinitely more sympathy for the punk kid who robs a convenience store than the scumbag CEO who bilks his employees out of the pensions they were guaranteed.
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I would submit that people living in the "ghettoes" of the US are not desperately poor.
Whaa? How do you define "desparately poor?" Cause for me, higher suicide rates = desparate, and being statisticaly below the poverty line = poor.
You have to look at the actual quality of life. Having been desparately poor, I can tell you a roof over your head doesn't mean shit if it's winter and the landlord doesn't care that the furnace is broken so your toothpaste is frozen, and the people who live below you are having another coke-binge party on a Wednesday night at 5 am that escalates into threats of murder, and lying there in your bed, hearing the screaming and the music so loud it sounds like it's right in your bedroom, thinking you know that you have to be on your way to work in three hours and some how appear sane and articulate. So you get up, and it's so fuck*ng cold out from under your blankets that it hurts to walk across the floor. And you call the cops, and they never bother to show up. So you start to cry. You lie there for a few more hours, the screaming dies down, but the same damn CCR CD keeps playing over and over on repeat at full volume. Then you go to work, and you come home and the heat still isn't on so you keep your winter parka on while you try to study for your exam, but you nod off because you're so tired. Then you wake up and boil water for Mr. Noodles, and it's always Mr. Noodles, or actually the no-name equivelent of Mr. Noodles if you want to pay for your textbooks to get out of this place some day. Then the neigbours start their next coke party, and you call the police and tell them that this time it really sounds like they're going to kill each other, so they show up siren's blaring. It gets quiet for a while, you try to study, then the neighbour gets it in his head that you are the cause of the latest bust up and comes pounding and kicking on your door.
This is a snapshot of exactly what happened to me on one night in the hood I lived in while putting myself through university. It is not even an unusual snapshot of a night in that place. Unusual was when the eleven year old told me he wanted to murder me, then threw a butter knife at me. Come on kid, your mom probably needs that to cook hash on! Yes I had a roof over my head, food and water, but the quality of living was extremely low. It was a desparate situation. I suppose I could've gone to a food bank, but guess what? I was too embarassed. I did take to the library for naps and heat for a while.
Yes, if you take a country-wide famine or constant bombing as acomparison, the two are not comperable, but it's still doesn't make the North American situation excuseable. The fact that I had no where better to go - that the next apartment I moved to the guy upstairs beat his girlfriend so bad I thought he'd kill her, that the girl next door had sex so loud I thought she was in my room, that the hallway always smell of dope, the fact that one of my buddies got beaten within an inch of his life a block away, the fact that I got the blood of a girl in my building who killed herself on my shoes on the way out the building as I saw her bloody body get carried out on a stretcher, the fact that another friend had a huge, dripping, breathing hole in her ceiling that her landlord couldn't care fix - all these things - they are not okay. I'm sorry but they're just not. I was in the middle of all this trying to get out, and you know what? Yeah, I got my degree, but with the situation I was in, I saw exactly how the odds were stacked against me. It would have been so easy to just not go into work because I could sleep during the day when my neighbour's passed out, or miss class because I could take an extra shift to replace my ripped up winter coat. I had lots of friend just as smart as me, who couldn't go to school 'cause they were too busy taking care of mom because dad drank too much, too busy working to pay off their sister's drug debt, etc. etc. I was the only Aboriginal student in my department in fact, and even worse than the whole situation with housing was the way I got paraded around in the department itself. It was deeply, deeply insulting to be the "example." The glad handing that went on, like I was a stupid monkey who didn't know it was happening, was absolutely horrific.
The attitude that "it's not that bad" is so very, very ignorant - it smacks of a total blindness to reality. I already acknowledged in my other post that there is a lack of accountability amoung the North American poor, yes, only the individual can rise above a situation, but don't even try to say that your country's poor aren't desparate. That it's not that bad. It's not about not having Nikes and an iPod, bub.
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That's a long and articulate post. I doubt I can do it justice - I'll try.
In absolute terms living in an innercity 'ghetto' or 'slum' or 'tenement' doesn't seem to be 'desparately poor' but the issue can't be taken in a global way. The issues that drive depression and all of it's happy children, like dug use, alcoholism, gambling, domestic violence, etc. are not really related to what we have or don't have. The problem is the PERCEIVED difference between what some people have and what others believe that they want because having those things is obviously why that person is perceived to have a better life.
I've met so many poor people who have put together good homes and taken care of their families with so little that I can't subscribe to the poverty argument as the root cause of many social problems. I think there is an absence of a sense of community, a sense of community values, and a long history of benign neglect and payoffs from the government that have left some poor people in a state of dependency.
Personal responsibility and an understanding of personal worth, the worth of others, and having something to contribute to the world are really important - having your knowledge, skills, abilities, and talents recognized, utilized, appreciated and rewarded are powerful ways to work on individuals to build stronger, healthier communities. (this is illustrated by the common holding that professional sports are the "only way out of the ghetto") Programs that bring worth to individuals could be powerful.
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AD - I do agree with you that poverty isn't an indicator of personal happiness, and in fact, in spite of the hellish housing issues, I remember those days as deeply happy and wonderful times. But personal happiness isn't the only indicator of quality of life - just a central is a feeling of security, and this is something poorly lacking in poverty sticken neighbourhoods, and the central worry in my life. I would often wonder as I walked down my street if today would be the day where my door would be kicked in, my meager possesions stolen or urniated on, or the day I would be stabbed, raped, mugged. I know that this is a worry for anybody, anywhere, but when it happens right next door, almost everyday, and to people you are in direct contact with, instead of some unknown person in a newspaper, these fears come more often, and are that much more legitimate.
I suppose my point is that, living in poor neighbourhoods, the situation is desparate: even though I was not a participant in the downward spiral-type behaviour, its effects spilled over in to my life regularly. Sometimes the things I directly witnessed would haunt me for days and effect my functioning quite drastically. And I know that of all the people I talk to who grew up in suburbia, that the sort of situations I described were not part of their reality in any regular or consistant way. They describe a warm lull of going to school, coming home for dinner, spending time with family. Yes, their lives were occasionally peppered with the "bad things" too, but when it came to desparate situations, it was a once-every-few-months-type thing, not a daily-thing like it is in hoods all over North America. I can only speak from my own personal experience, of course, but to me it seemed that if you're living in the hood you're dealing with violence and crime everyday, either as a witness or as a participant, that your life is hindered more drastically than someone effected by it once in a while. The housing issue is the one I'm most concerned with here. I got angry at the implication that if someone has a roof over their head they have nothing to complain about - that they are not legitimatly suffering. Unlike you AD, many people haven't seen the reality of an impoverished home. People who have not actually spent time in a hood or ghetto often don't realize that even if you keep to yourself and aren't a direct participant in the violence or crime, as I and many more people do in these shitty places, that the illegal, violent, annoying & whatever acts are taking place right next door, literally and figuratively. If you've only got a layer of drywall or a thin door between you and a crack head, it will effect your life, no matter what you do on your side of the wall.
Before the coke-head neighbours, I lived above an AIDS activist who was slowly dying of the disease, and whose eight year old son I met twice before the boy died of the disease. This neighbour was a quite, kind soul. When I was moving in, I had no idea he was sick, though he was so skinny I could have guessed something was wrong - his arms were like ropey sticks. As my dad and I moved my furniture up the narrow spiral staircase to the second floor we struggled to get my very old couch up the stairs. It was one of those old-school covertable sofa-beds with metal frame, and ugly wood embelishments. It probably weighed over 100 pounds. We gave up right at a bend in the stairs. Along came my skinny neighbour with an offer to help. My dad and I looked at the little guy and made the somewhat fair assumption that he probably wouldn't do any better, but it was worth a try. My neighbour climbed over the couch, my dad on the lower stairs, and in this totally shocking moment he lifted the entire weight of it himself, with my father's hands only lightly guiding it - not bearing any of the wieght - and carried it the entire way up the stairs effortlessly. I remember asking him if he worked for a moving company, and he just smiled shyly and queitly left. This neighbour has always been a metaphor of the inner-city to me. I think of him often, and though we only shared the polite and perfunctory relationship of neighbours who occasionally crossed paths, when a large obituary article of his life's work appeared in the paper, I shed some tears.
I don't deny that there is the potential for goodness, happiness and a full-life if one lives in an impoverished area, but I disagree with anyone who claims someone isn't legitimate in their suffering just because things aren't "as bad" as they are somewhere else. The quality of life is lower in North America impoverished areas in clear, tangible ways, with definite room for improvement.